Timeframe: August 2021 – 2024
Location: Enugu, Aba, Onitsha
Key Actors: IPOB Directorate of State, Autopilot
enforcers, South-East Governors’ Forum, business community
Epigraph:
“Weekly shutdowns are eroding ₦4 trillion annually from the regional
economy.”
— SBM Intelligence, August 2022 [1].
The Camera Lens
Monday morning in Onitsha’s Main Market used to be chaos. Today shutters are padlocked, buses parked, children kept indoors. What began as voluntary civil disobedience metamorphosed into enforced paralysis. Traders whisper about masked men arriving at dawn to mark dissenters with petrol. The policy meant to honor detained agitators now drains livelihoods.
SBM Intelligence traced the shift from organic solidarity—people staying home out of respect for Kanu—to coercion by splinter cells using violence [1]. Residents recount text messages threatening arson for anyone who opens shop. The Autopilot faction ignored Kanu’s public letters disowning the shutdowns, insisting that “obedience proves loyalty.”
The Financial Times estimated that manufacturers relocating from Nnewi to Lagos cited sit-at-home uncertainties as a primary reason [2]. Banks operate skeletal services; transport unions lose fares; schools compress curricula into four days. Businesses lobby governors for protection, but security forces themselves fear becoming targets. The region bleeds revenue while Lagos and Accra benefit from relocated warehouses.
In August 2022, Kanu’s legal team released handwritten notes urging an end to the lockdowns [3]. Yet audio messages from enforcers dismissed the letters as forged. Without a central authority, the policy persists, illustrating how leaderless movements can imprison their own supporters.
Sit-at-home began as moral protest but devolved into a self-inflicted embargo. In trying to hurt the State, the region starved its own merchants, demonstrating how anger without strategy can cannibalize the very society it seeks to liberate.